1. Field
The present invention relates to techniques for controlling disk drives. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for scheduling read operations for disk drives in a set of disk drives.
2. Related Art
Reconstruction of a missing disk drive in a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) can be a time-consuming process. Typically, the write operations performed during reconstruction of the missing disk drive comprise sequential write operations. While sequential write operations can have a relatively high data rate compared to other write operations, the data rate of sequential write operations may be substantially reduced by a number of factors, including the scheduling of intervening read operations during the reconstruction process. This reduced data rate can significantly increase the reconstruction time, which increases the risk of losing data if a second drive fails while the missing drive is being reconstructed.
Hence, what is needed is a method and apparatus for scheduling read operations for disk drives in an array of redundant disk drives during reconstruction of a missing disk drive in the array.